Lotus Renault British GP - Silverstone Race Report

Silverstone Circuit

Nick Heiidfeld: “As usual I said ’never give up”

Nick, 16th to 8th - not a bad result?

NH: We saw on Saturday that this would be a tough weekend but as usual I said ‘never give up.’ I had a good start, but the first few corners were incredibly tight and I was happy to get through them without any damage to the car.

Nick Heidfeld, Lotus Renault F1 Team

Photo by: xpb.cc

You enjoy the challenge of working your way through the grid, don’t you?

NH: Yes, I do actually. Obviously I would like to qualify much higher to begin with - and we should be qualifying much higher - but it is an exciting challenge to work your way through the order like I did today.

Strategically, the race went well?

NH: The big question for the race was when to change from the intermediates to the slicks and we were one of the first to do this. It was a good call, however we didn’t get as much of an advantage as you can sometimes get from timing your stop well. After that it was an interesting race for me as I had to look after my tyres and at the same time I had to attack and also defend at different times, particularly with Michael and Adrian. Finding the balance between attacking, fighting and not killing the tyres was not only very satisfying, but it also worked out well for us with four valuable points.”

James Allison: “We need to pick ourselves up from here”

James, your verdict on what was a very disappointing Silverstone Saturday for LRGP?

JA: The alterations to the engine rules have clearly upset the order somewhat, but that’s not where all our focus lies. The fact is that for the past three or four races we have been on a trend that is far from impressive and, at this event, we have been showing far less performance than we should be showing with our car and of the efforts of our team and partners.

We need to pick ourselves up from here and get a lot of the forthcoming developments onto the car

James Allison

We need to pick ourselves up from here and get a lot of the forthcoming developments onto the car, because P14 and P16 are simply not good enough. We missed the top ten by a very small margin today but we’ve got upgrades to come for Germany which are worth three-tenths, even more tenths for the race after that. So, we’ve got to grind that out and put the car in a position that is more reflective of where we should be.

Has it been difficult with the poor weather to understand the impact the engine mapping changes have had?

JA: It has made it awkward but it’s been like this for everyone, so that’s no justification for underperforming like we have over the past two days.

What can be done tomorrow?

JA: We’ve benefited from the fact that we’ve saved an extra set of tyres, so there’s a silver lining to the cloud! The tyres will be precious tomorrow, there’s no doubt of that. The soft (option) tyre is the right one to be racing on, and the degradation is high, so rather like in Spain and at other tracks this season having a virgin set is quite a good thing. We’ve got to get a good start and then make the most of the leverage that things like that extra set will give us.